Charlotte Philby's Parental Leave: "I refrain from speech so as to preserve our collective dignity"
A mother's weekly dispatch from the pre-school frontline
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Your support makes all the difference.There's been an incident, involving my husband and another woman. It happened at our daughter's friend's fourth birthday party, over a slice of soggy vanilla sponge. "I didn't know what I was doing," my husband mutters, crestfallen, as we traipse home through a rain-sodden estate. "I don't even remember her name. It just all happened so fast."
What happened, I ask calmly, careful not to scupper my chances to extract details of this apparently dreadful situation. You can tell me. "I don't know," he flounders. "It was so weird. One minute we were having a chat, and then suddenly she asked me if the baby had turned one yet, and for some reason I just forgot that he had. So I said, 'No no, not yet', because I wasn't really listening and she said, 'Oh, really? I thought it was his birthday last week'.
And I was like 'No no,' so then she was like, 'Oh, well it's not that I'm suggesting that I know your son's birthday better than you do, I'm not suggesting you're lying'. But then I remembered that it was actually his birthday last week, but by then it was too awkward to say anything."
So what did you do, I ask. "I walked off," he says, in a tone which suggests any other behaviour at that specific moment would have been unthinkable. I look at him sideways, and temporarily refrain from speech so as to preserve our collective dignity as we shuffle through a group of Orthodox Jews who have appeared from nowhere. At which point our daughter looks up: "Mummy, why are they all wearing those SILLY HATS?!"
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